Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/177

 Katharine! Methinks e’en now I behold the opium-tinged gentleman from Hong Kong, in flowing Oriental robes, entering my suite of apartments, bearing an Injin tray of manzanita, upon which lie in state my dark blue overalls and my blue jumper, with one lone red bandanna glowing upon its pulseless breast, and these all swathed about with tissue paper and baby-ribbon, a cute little wisp of golden-rod tucked in the left hip pocket of my blue-jeans. Bon ami! How absurd!”

“Bon ami!—I don’t know what it means, and I doubt if you do.”

“I don’t, Katharine, but we’ve got to work up in the languages a little if we are going to have a houseful of foreign-born menials; they will be likely to act sort of uppish at times, then I’ll roar at ’em in French, and I fancy it will be pretty scary.”

“It certainly will be awesome,—your kind of French. But do listen to that clock striking seven!”

“Tempus fugit,—to continue my classic form of speech; and as your thought-waves are not likely to reach the shekel-dispenser of Skibo in time to bring returns before next week, shall I rise and fill the wash-boiler as of yore?”

“You may, if you please,—as Chang Wang’s barque seems to be detained by head winds.”

While we were engaged in the task of gathering together the depressing laundry outfit, my assistant earnestly assured me that he “really would take a hand